Entries in Midnight in Paris
(5)

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage(LOS ANGELES) -- Blame it on the expanded best picture race, on the films themselves or on the guilds that honored a variety of movies: This year's Oscar race is still too close to call in some categories.

"There is a little tension going into Sunday," Yahoo! Movies contributing editor Thelma Adams told ABCNews.com. "I know who I should be saying is in the lead, and then I think there is still a little bit of mystery left."

ABC News' Oscars Stock Market Index, a collaboration with Bluefin Labs, which provides a real-time snapshot of social sentiment, what's trending and the collective assessment of entertainment industry experts, shows just how much uncertainty there is going into Sunday's ceremony.

At the final guild awards before Sunday's Oscars ceremony, The Descendants and Midnight in Paris got a boost but not the presumed front-runner The Artist.

The black-and-white, mostly silent homage to the era before "talkies" was excluded from last Sunday's Writer's Guild Awards because its writers are French. Instead, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, another film set in the 1920s, won for best original screenplay, while The Descendants earned the trophy for best adapted screenplay.

Earlier in the year, the producers guild gave The Artist their top prize, while the film's director, Michel Hazanavicius, was hailed as the year's best by the directors guild.

(LOS ANGELES) -- Woody Allen famously once said that "90 percent of life is just showing up."

Now, with Allen's Midnight in Paris nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture, a lot of people are wondering if Allen might actually show up at this year's Oscars, being broadcast this Sunday night on ABC.

But, if past awards ceremonies are any indication, don't bet on it.

Midnight in Paris, which charmed critics and audiences alike, also earned Oscar nominations for best director, original screenplay and art direction. The tale of a modern-day Hollywood screenwriter, Gil (Owen Wilson), who travels back to the Paris of the 1920s to mingle with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, is Allen's biggest box office hit ever.

Since opening last May, it's taken in more than $56.5 million in the United States, and almost $92 million more worldwide. And at age 76, with 41 movies to his credit, Allen is enjoying some of the best reviews of his career, after a string of films that garnered lukewarm reviews.

Peter Travers, whose program Popcorn airs on ABC News Now, named Midnight in Paris to his Top 10 list, saying, "Allen's love letter to the City of Light is his best and most beguiling film in years." In his Rolling Stone review, Travers wrote, "Not since 1979's Manhattan, in which he rhapsodized over the New York of his black-and-white dreams, has Allen used a camera to make such urgent, passionate love to a city." He added, "For all the film's bracing humor and ravishing romance, there are also haunting shadows. That alone makes it a keeper."

And what has made this particular romantic comedy and fantasy such a hit with audiences?

On the website Metacritic, one moviegoer said, "I'm ashamed of myself that I never watched a single Woody Allen movie until now. Midnight in Paris is just simply dazzling. The script is smart and provokes intriguing ideas."

But through all the decades of accolades, Allen has consistently shunned awards shows. Already this season, he skipped the Oscar nominees' luncheon and took a pass on the Golden Globes, where Midnight in Paris won best screenplay.

Back in 1974, when his funny, futuristic hit Sleeper was ignored by the Academy, Allen was quoted as saying, "The whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide by the judgment of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don't."

But there has been one, and only one, time that Allen appeared at the Oscars. He took the stage at the 2002 ceremonies, to show his support for New York in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and urge the industry to keep making movies in the Big Apple.

In his own kind of personal love letter to the wounded city, he said New York was still a great, romantic, exciting place. In more typical Allen fashion, he acknowledged the standing ovation by quipping, "Thank you very much. That makes up for the strip search."

Now, Allen's Midnight in Paris, his love letter to the City of Light, has him front and center at Oscar time once again.

And will Allen be a no-show once again? When ABC News contacted his publicist's office on Wednesday, we were told they were not able to comment on that.

But, if 90 percent of life is showing up, when the awards are handed out Sunday night, Woody Allen will likely stick with the 10 percent.

Scorsese received a nod for Hugo, and Allen is in the running for his work on Midnight in Paris. The other nominees are David Fincher, for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Alexander Payne, for The Descendants; and Michel Hazanavicius, for The Artist.

Absent from the list is Steven Spielberg; he most recently directed The Adventures of Tintin and likely Oscar contender War Horse.

The DGA award for outstanding directorial achievement in a feature film is considered to be a reliable predictor of who will win the Academy Award for best director. Only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has its feature film winner not gone on to win the best-director Oscar later in the year.

The TV nominees will be announced on Tuesday. The 64th Annual DGA Awards, hosted by Kelsey Grammer, will be held in Beverly Hills on Jan. 28.

-- Super 8: Strange things are afoot in an Ohio town in 1979 following an explosive train crash that occurs while a group of kids are making a movie using a Super 8 film camera. Kyle Chandler and Elle Fanning star in the drama, which was directed by J.J. Abrams and co-produced by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG-13.

-- Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer: Based on the book series, the film follows Judy Moody, a third-grader who's forced to live with her aunt for the summer. She creates a series of dares to keep herself occupied and make the summer a little more exciting. Jordana Beatty and Heather Graham star. Rated PG.

George Pimentel/FilmMagic(NEW YORK) -- Tuesday night at the New York premiere of Woody Allen's new movie, Midnight in Paris, Michael Sheen, one of the film's stars, publicly acknowledged for the first time his real-life romance with co-star Rachel McAdams.

Last week, at the Cannes film festival, McAdams and Sheen were seen arm and arm on the red carpet. Tuesday night, miles from the media frenzy in the French Riviera in an intimate basement at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, when asked about McAdams, Sheen told ABC News, "We've been a couple for a while now."

Inspired by the romantic sights while filming on location in France, Sheen admitted that, "I'm sure [Paris sparked our romance]. That's where we met...[and] got to know each other but … [we didn't start dating until] much later on…in her home city of Toronto."

It is not the first time in recent years that two actors have fallen in love after filming a Woody Allen movie. Oscar winners Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem starred in Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008, were married last July, and recently gave birth to their first son, Leo.